Desmond de Silva: Colourful QC and scourge of war criminals, most famously Charles Taylor of Liberia 1939-2018
● Sir Desmond de Silva, who has died at the age of 78, was a British lawyer and scourge of war criminals. His greatest legal achievement was the role he played in the prosecution of Charles Taylor, the former president of Liberia.
A witty, generous man who had a great love for the finer things in life, De Silva was particularly fond of Armagnac and once threatened to sue a newspaper for reporting that he spent £400 a week on it. This was, he protested, an “outrageous slur that damages my reputation. I spend much more.”
In fact his love of brandy once saved him from one of several attempts on his life over the years. In 1981, a Marxist coup took place in the Gambia. Once the rebellion was put down De Silva was sent to prosecute the ringleaders for high treason. One night, in his hotel suite, he poured glasses of brandy for himself and a junior in his chambers. A slight discolouration was enough to alert him and enable him to stop his colleague before he could take a sip. Analysis later showed that the brandy had been poisoned.
De Silva was born in Kandy, in what was then Ceylon, on December 13 1939.
His legal career began in 1964. In 2002 he was nominated by the government of Sierra Leone as the first deputy prosecutor to the UN-inspired War Crimes Tribunal, set up to deal with the horrors of Sierra Leone’s civil war. He negotiated the transfer of Taylor to The Hague for trial. He retired in 2006 for health reasons, leaving his successor to conduct the trial. Taylor is serving a 50-year jail term in a UK prison.
In 1987 De Silva married Princess Katarina of Yugoslavia, a great-great-greatgranddaughter of Queen Victoria.
At the launch party for his memoirs De Silva revealed that among the guests was one of the many would-be assassins who had tried their luck over the years. The man had once drunkenly burst into his bedroom at a country house weekend “with a sword in his extended hand” after he mistakenly thought the lawyer was in bed with his girlfriend.
De Silva’s marriage to Princess Katarina ended in divorce. She survives him with their daughter, Victoria. — © The Daily Telegraph, London